Ok.. with some help from AA forum, I got the SAAVERS to pop up.. I don't necessarily see Alaska Airline availability, but at least some number of miles required popped up.. i.e. 45K. I assume that this the required mileage for a return flight, which is the same for Aeroplan. The routing is YYC-LIH.

More than half an hour navigating the aa.com website.

Back to Avios, based on comments I've been reading, redeeming Avios on these routings are going to be different. Looks like on the return leg there are two stopovers, and that means a larger amount of points required to select those routings, as opposed to direct flights which is going to be a bit cheaper than to fly the extra miles and segments.

I see sparce availability for business based on 4 passengers, but the availability on economy is pretty good. I'm used to Aeroplan, so sparce availability and flexibility is key.

Just to be sure.. availability SAAVERS will be available in the same quantities as booking with Avios points. I read through a few threads that this isn't the case, but its more the norm than the exception?

Edit: Guv1976 pointed out that the 45K is per direction, so a one way ticket. Sadly no availability on AA or any partners on Savers from what I can see. Alaska Air didn't pop up at all, but I checked my search parameters and included all airline participants, so if there was supposedly availability it would show up. So looks like no availability for YYC-LIH on savers for the months of July returning August.

The search is about 300 days out, so there should be wide availability I imagine on savers redemption. But that means that the Avios program doesn't really work for our travel needs, at least for HI destinations.